


Honor Proving

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Series: What You Leave Behind [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Dwarven Politics, Dwarven Traditions, First Meetings, Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 01:15:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6174415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dwarves of the warrior caste come of age when they win their first Proving, and Gorim Saelac is not yet a man when he sees the Princess Aeducan for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honor Proving

The dwarves of the warrior caste come of age when they win their first Proving, and Gorim Saelac is not yet a man when he sees the Princess Aeducan for the first time. At barely fifteen, she is more than a year younger than him and utterly unremarkable, except that she has never been outside the Palace and her lord father is presenting her to the people of Orzammar for the first time. 

She casts her eyes down demurely when her father declares her the very sword and shield of House Aeducan; the defender of Orzammar. It’s political nonsense, Gorim knows, meant to build up the mythos surrounding House Aeducan as they bring out a new generation. Just a few years before, Gorim saw as Prince Trian was brought out before the Assembly, the heir of House Aeducan, and heir-apparent to the throne of Orzammar. There is a third Aeducan child, a second prince, who will in just a few years be announced. Gorim supposes the last will be brought up to manage the diplomatic needs of Orzammar. King, Commander, Diplomat. As if the Aeducans planned the birth of their children to serve their thirst for power.

At sixteen, not even a man, Gorim has already learned something of politics. 

His father mutters something about how Endrin was once lauded as the second son before he murdered his brother and became king, but Gorim knows better than to say anything that might draw attention to his father’s treasonous murmurings. Instead, he looks at the Princess Aeducan and tries to imagine this small girl killing the proud-chested brother that stands at their father’s right hand. She hardly looks large enough to lift the heavy sword she wears over the ceremonial garb they’ve trussed her up in. 

King Endrin announces that there will be a Proving, a test to determine who among the warriors of Orzammar is worthy to be Second of the princess. Gorim scoffs, but though he has fought in the Provings, he has never won. When his father looks to him with a spare glance, he has no trouble understanding that this is an opportunity for House Saelac that he cannot pass by. 

The day of the Provings, the Princess does not appear in the royal box beside her father and brother. Gorim isn’t sure whether this is a sign of her temperament, a fit of pique, or if there is some unusual royal tradition that prevents her from watching the Provings held in her honor. Gorim isn’t sure he thinks well of a warrior who cannot bear to watch a fight on their behalf, princess or no, but he’s given his offerings to the Ancestors and trained past breaking to face the greatest warriors in Orzammar. Whatever the princess’s temperament, being named her Second is a greater honor than any warrior of House Saelac has held in more than a century. 

Gorim easily wins his first two rounds, both children of the warrior caste seeking to earn their honor. Kaera Moloch is a childhood friend, and she claps him firmly on the shoulder when Gorim helps her to her feet after a knockout blow.

“Ancestors guide you, Gorim,” she murmurs to the corner of his helm. “The next round will be much more difficult.”

Kaera is right. Gorim goes down twice before he manages to get a good hit on the next warrior, a younger noble from House Helmi. Her sword comes down on his shield with such a force that it rattles all the way into Gorim’s shoulder, and he almost goes down a third time before he manages a good stop-thrust that gives him the advantage and, finally, victory. 

He’s barely fast enough to take down the dagger-wielding rogue in the next round and he takes a deep wound from a greatsword in the penultimate round, but it isn’t until he’s resting in the wings afterward that it strikes Gorim that he is only a single fight from winning his right to manhood. 

Gorim starts immediately for the Proving arena to watch the round that will determine his opponent, keenly aware that they have almost certainly been watching him while he barreled through the rounds without a care for the rest of the field. He’s only in time to see the last blow, which echoes through the silent arena just before a cacophonic roar explodes from all around him, and a deeply traditional, deferential bow to her opponent from the winner.

It is this strange gesture that shakes Gorim when he returns to the quiet wing where the other warriors are recovering. A warrior with the heart for the honorable traditions of Orzammar is just the sort of second for a princess, and Gorim is not that man. 

“Shake off the clouds,” his father tells him when he comes to offer his well-wishes to Gorim, handing him his sword and a shield bearing the crest of House Saelac. “You have a formidable opponent.”

“A better-suited one,” Gorim says absently, checking the edge of his sword. He needs it sharp, but he can’t afford to kill someone in an honor proving of this magnitude. Before he leaves for the arena, he thinks to ask his father the name of the woman he’s fighting -- another noble, he can guess -- and decides that it doesn’t matter if she’s Harrowmont, Dace, or the Paragon Aeducan incarnate.

The Proving Master announces her merely as a scion of Orzammar, the ceremonial name given to an unproven warrior of no House, but when the woman bows to him, wishes him the Ancestors’ favor, and nearly knocks his sword from his hand with her first, shattering blow, Gorim revises his opinion that her identity is unimportant. 

The warrior is faster than Gorim and, though he has an inkling that he might be stronger than she is, he has no chance to find out. She parries a powerful strike, the force of her counter maneuver pushing Gorim off balance. His sword swings wide and strikes the earth beneath them and it seems for an unnaturally long instant of time that she will end his streak of fortune here. But Gorim lifts his shield and recovers, springing from a crouch and overpowering her for a bare, frenzied moment. 

She knocks him back with both feet, carefully avoiding a stray cut from her sword when she rolls to the side and to her feet. It is not an even match between them, Gorim knows, but for all that she is well-trained and powerful, he cannot help thinking that she is an inexperienced fighter. As though she has been given perfect training without the challenge of a true opponent.

Gorim has no time to dwell on that -- he can hardly dwell on the roaring crowd around them, far louder now than during any of his previous matches. In the end, her training overcomes her inexperience, and she sidesteps the upward swing of Gorim’s sword with elegant finesse that Gorim has never managed in all the years of his own, less refined training. He doesn’t even feel the pommel thrust in the weakened shoulder joint of his armor, but Gorim does feel the thud of the hardened stone beneath him when he falls back and loses his breath. 

It’s over, he thinks, squeezing his eyes closed as he waits for the ceremonial end of the proving, when she will rest her swordpoint at his neck and claim her victory. It doesn’t come, even long after Gorim has regained his breath, if not his grip on his sword. 

“It’s over,” he croaks up at her, his vision blurred with a trickle of blood creeping down his forehead. 

The warrior, who will soon be Second for Princess Aeducan, lifts her sword and thrusts it into the ground beside him. 

“I yield,” she declares, loud enough for the arena to hear. Gorim realizes that it has been staggeringly apparent who is under the battered grey iron armor of the scion of Orzammar; realizes who has given him the honor of Second to a royal Aeducan.

He has only managed to sit up when Princess Aeducan removes her helm with a soft hiss of pain that Gorim alone can hear and tosses it at his feet. “I yield,” she repeats, but instead of kneeling, she offers a gloved hand and a smile to him. 

“Gorim of House Saelac.”


End file.
